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After Juno and Juliet I read something more substantive:
The Brotherhood of Thieves. I was interested in it because I love the restaurant named after it, but it has much more significance than that. The author was a speaker at a gathering of abolitionists which turned into a riot.
Foster wrote this pamphlet some time later, making a strong case against slavery in a time when that wasn't an easy or necessarily popular stance.
He makes a case for why a slave owner is, among other things, a thief, a murderer, and an adulterer. A slaver steals the fruits of slave labor, takes the whole of the slave's life, and takes on the power to dissolve a slave's marriage.
But he goes on to spread the blame, pointing out that the Southern slave trade could not have been successful without the support (implicitly as well as explicitly) of the North.
Then he moves to the churches, documenting their stances on the issue. How they supported slavery and fought against the abolitionists.
It's a look into our history, and well worth reading for that. But it also carries lessons we still need to learn today about how we, as individual citizens and group members, need to take responsibility for not just the wrongs we do but for those that we allow and enable around us.
The Brotherhood of Thieves. I was interested in it because I love the restaurant named after it, but it has much more significance than that. The author was a speaker at a gathering of abolitionists which turned into a riot.
Foster wrote this pamphlet some time later, making a strong case against slavery in a time when that wasn't an easy or necessarily popular stance.
He makes a case for why a slave owner is, among other things, a thief, a murderer, and an adulterer. A slaver steals the fruits of slave labor, takes the whole of the slave's life, and takes on the power to dissolve a slave's marriage.
But he goes on to spread the blame, pointing out that the Southern slave trade could not have been successful without the support (implicitly as well as explicitly) of the North.
Then he moves to the churches, documenting their stances on the issue. How they supported slavery and fought against the abolitionists.
It's a look into our history, and well worth reading for that. But it also carries lessons we still need to learn today about how we, as individual citizens and group members, need to take responsibility for not just the wrongs we do but for those that we allow and enable around us.